🚀 Weekly Crypto Market Wrap: FEB 15, 2025

Navigating Muted Markets: Altcoins Shine as Inflation Data Fades

Contents

1. Overview in This Market
2. Movement in the Top 8
3. This Week’s Narrative
4. Key Advancements
5. DeFi Brief
6. Meme’s in Motion
7. Fundraises
8. Airdrops Abound
9. The Wrap Up

Overview

The week started off slow, with the markets largely bracing themselves for the CPI and PPI readings in the middle of the week. Although both CPI and PPI came in hot, the market largely shrugged it off after an initial sell-off, quickly recovering into the end of the week. Total crypto market cap climbed this week by 1.62%, from $3.26T to $3.313T, yet the crypto markets still lag their traditional counterparts, with the S&P 500 returning 0.49% this week and the Nasdaq returning 1.13%. Despite macroeconomic data taking center stage just a couple of weeks back, it seems that this week’s inflation data had little impact on the markets despite a negative reading, nor did the markets reacted much to announcements by the Trump administration with regard to the tariff situation.

Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week up 0.16%, while Ethereum (ETH) trailed not far behind, closing at 0.54% down from the prior week. Despite the volatility, Bitcoin dominance has begun to lose its shine, slowly trailing down from its highs to close the week off at 60.95%, down 1.69% from the week prior, which indicates a start of a shift towards altcoins again, although not all market participants are so confident.

Daily liquidations on both sides stayed largely muted throughout the week, especially with the relatively low volatility across the markets. Total liquidations per day barely touched above $300M, with most days even holding under $250M. Funding rates have continued to stay pretty much unchanged, with relatively low levels of leverage in the system after the wipe out from the week prior.

• Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has acquired another 7,633 BTC for $742M at an average price of $97,255 per Bitcoin.
• 21Shares files with the SEC a request to permit staking for their Ethereum spot ETF, making them the first ETF to do so.
• Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) rebrands to Strategy, adopting the classic Bitcoin orange color and a new logo sporting Bitcoin’s stylized “B” logo.

Several subsectors of altcoins outperformed this week, with notable outperformers including AI tokens such as AI Rig Complex (ARC) and ai16z (AI16Z), which are both up more than 50% on the week, and BNB-based PancakeSwap (CAKE), which saw a resurgence, climbing almost 100% this week. Other strong performers include memecoin, Popcat (POPCAT), NFT marketplace Magic Eden (ME) and Sonic (S).

Movement in the Top 8

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This Week’s Narrative

After the Memecoin rush on Solana, the spotlight has returned to the Binance Smart Chain after a test token turned into a memecoin, sparking a new memecoin meta on the chain. Binance lists the “test” memecoin, TST, a token used in a video tutorial from Binance, much to the surprise, and outrage, of many memecoin traders. Binance founder, Changpeng Zhao, later also released a tweet to address some of the concerns. Binance founder, CZ, shares the story of his dog, Broccoli, after being asked for his dog’s name and photo, spawning a series of BROCCOLI memecoins on both the Binance Smart Chain and Solana, with this shift pushing forward the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem, with ecosystem tokens surging and BNB flipping Solana in market cap.

• Binance lists the “test” memecoin, TST, a token used in a video tutorial from Binance, much to the surprise, and outrage, of many memecoin traders. Binance founder, Changpeng Zhao, later also released a tweet to address some of the concerns.
• Binance founder, CZ, shares the story of his dog, Broccoli, after being asked for his dog’s name and photo, spawning a series of BROCCOLI memecoins on both the Binance Smart Chain and Solana.

Key Advancements

• Real-time blockchain, MegaETH, sells out the mint of their soulbound NFT collection, The Fluffle, raising 5,000 ETH for the protocol, in what has been praised as an interesting mechanism for a token sale, especially with harsh criticisms of “VC coins”. The NFT is soulbound, and guarantees its holders a minimum of 5% of MegaETH’s token supply, which will be subject to a six month vesting period. At a mint price of 1 ETH, minters are effectively investing into the project at a fully diluted valuation of ~$520M.
• Tokenized IP blockchain, Story Protocol, launches their mainnet, alongside the IP token airdrop.
• Uniswap L2, Unichain, goes live with their public mainnet. Unichain supports one second block times and cheaper gas costs than Ethereum mainnet. Unichain will integrate with the Optimism Superchain later in the year.
• Gaming blockchain, Ronin, removes the allowlist for contract deployment on the chain, allowing permissionless smart contract deployment to all users.
• Arbitrum launches Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) on Arbitrum One. BoLD enables truly permissionless validation, enabling a single honest validator to defend against any number of malicious actors, while challenges are resolved in parallel.
• Move-based L1, Aptos, announces Zaptos, a new network architecture, designed to scale Aptos up to 20K transactions per second, with sub-second latency and reducing latency by more than 40% under high load.
• Decentralized AI layer, Bittensor, passes the governance vote for their upcoming upgrade to dynamic TAO (dTAO).
• Base AI agent launchpad, Virtuals Protocol, launches on Solana expanding their reach into Solana, which already has several other competing AI agent launchpads. The bridging of the VIRTUAL token will be supported by Stargate.

DeFi Brief

• The Ethereum Foundation deploys 45,000 ETH into lending protocols on Ethereum, including Aave, Compound and Spark (by MakerDAO), with plans to explore staking incoming, in a move comes as a pleasant surprise to Ethereum supporters. The move helps to target both sets of criticisms, with the yield helping to cover some expenses while the Ethereum Foundation directly supports projects on Ethereum.
• Trump’s World Liberty Financial announces plans for a strategic token reserve, designed to support leading projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are “reshaping global finance”.
• ETH staking platform, Lido, introduces Lido V3 with staking vaults (stVaults), enabling more flexible and customized staking setups built around stETH.
• StarkNet lending protocol, zkLend, was exploited for 3,300 ETH (~$8.5M). The team has contacted the exploiter, offering a 10% white hat bounty. The exploiter has not responded.
• USDT0 introduces Legacy mesh, the infrastructure linking USDT deployments to the USDT0 ecosystem. Legacy Mesh has been deployed on Ethereum, TON, Arbitrum and Tron.

Meme's In Motion

• This week in meme coins has been a wild ride as always. With memecoin action having generally taken place on Solana for most of the cycle, the rapid rise of the TST token as well as Binance founder CZ himself commenting on his dog "Broccoli" inspired many speculators to look to the Binance Smart Chain as the new hot bed for new memecoins.
• The Central African Republic (CAR) releases an official CAR memecoin via pump.fun. The token reached a market cap high of $970M before retracing downwards.
• Founder of memecoin launchpad, Pump.fun, Alon, denies rumors that there is an upcoming pump.fun token.

Fundraises

• Web3 smart contract security automation protocol, Drosera, raises $3.25M in a seed round led by Greenfield Capital, with support from Paper Ventures, Anagram, Arrington Capital and more.
• Web3 development studio, Mirai Labs, raises $4M in a seed round led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from Sophon Foundation, Selini Capital, Manifold and more.
• Crypto trading app, Blum, raises $5M in a funding round led by gumi Cryptos Capital, with other investors including Spartan Group, YZi Labs, OKX Ventures and more.
• Bittensor-based financial layer, TaoFi, raises an undisclosed amount in a strategic funding round led by Digital Currency Group (DCG), with participation from Pantera, Taostats, Lyrik Ventures and more.
• Stablecoin payment blockchain, Plasma, raises $24M in a funding round led by Framework Ventures and Bitfinex, with support from Mirana Ventures, Nomura, 6th Man Ventures and more.

Airdrop Buzz

• IP-focused blockchain, Story Protocol, opens their IP token airdrop for claims, distributing 10% of the total token supply to eligible wallets, which can now claim for the next 30 days.
• Solana restaking layer, Solayer, opens claims for the LAYER token airdrop, distributing 12% of the token supply in their genesis airdrop.
• The Din Foundation, introduces DIN, the native token for Din, the chain for AI agents and applications. The airdrop checker is now live, with airdrop claims opening on February 14th.
• EVM NFT marketplace, OpenSea, announces SEA, the governance token for OpenSea. The claim will be accessible to US citizens and no claim date has been announced yet.
• Decentralized stablecoin issuer, Avalon Finance, announces the AVL token and upcoming airdrop, which distributes 12.5% of the token supply to early users and supporters.

The Wrap Up

This week saw markets shrug off hot CPI and PPI readings, with altcoins beginning to outperform as Bitcoin dominance wanes. The Binance Smart Chain memecoin meta has gained traction, while key advancements continue across various projects, especially AI. Keep an eye on the developments within Solana and Binance Smart Chain memecoins, along with potential airdrop opportunities and advancements in blockchain technology.